RadTech Announces 2020 Emerging Technology Award Winners

RadTech, the nonprofit for UV+EB, announces the 2020 Emerging Technology Award winners, to be presented at the RadTech 2020 Conference, March 8-11, in Orlando, Florida.

For the first time the competition includes a new award sponsored by the International Ultraviolet Association (IUVA). IUVA is the nonprofit dedicated to UV applications in public health and the environment, with a special focus on water, food and beverage and health care.

The RadTech/IUVA 2020 Emerging Technology Award Winners:

Electron Beam Technology for Food Packaging, PepsiCo

As consumers, NGOs and governments worldwide continue to seek innovative solutions for the development of a circular economy, PepsiCo is leading the way by working with the flexible packaging supply chain to develop advanced materials and processes for food packaging. As part of these PepsiCo initiatives, the company is exploring electron beam curing, as a fast, clean and energy savings way to dry inks, coatings and adhesives for their flexible packaging operations. Todd Fayne, a PepsiCo Project management and execution specialist for packaging materials and processes, has engaged the electron beam community and RadTech, offering invaluable expertise and knowledge to assist the industry in advancing food packaging sustainability efforts.

One of the largest and fastest growing opportunities in Additive Manufacturing is the Dental market—offering the advantages of 3D Printing such as customization, rapid manufacturing, and low equipment footprint. While the printing of teeth as temporary replacements is feasible, if not yet widely adopted, reaching the very high performance required for long term tooth replacement has been out of reach. Myerson, LLC (Chicago, IL) in collaboration with Hybrid Ceramic (San Francisco, CA) have developed a high-performance UV curable dental material that can be printed and used as long term teeth replacements. What makes this material unique is its high mechanical properties which are retained in the presence of water. Use of this new material is not limited to a specific UV Curable print technology and therefore can accommodate a variety of DLP and Ink Jet printers. In vitro and in vivo trials are underway with the goal to select the first-generation printers and begin the installation in dental laboratories and dental offices in 2020.

Surface Treatment of Intraocular Lens Injectors, AST Products, Inc.

LubriMATRIXTM technology has become a ‘Hidden Champion’ for cataract surgery, providing a novel and innovative surface treatment technology specifically developed to enable a safer, simpler and more effective intraocular lens (IOL) delivery. An IOL is an artificial lens made of polymeric or silicone materials and it is used to replace the patient’s natural lens that has become opaque, a.k.a. cataract. Designed to set the standard for current and next generation IOL injection systems, LubriMATRIX™ protects the IOL from damage during cataract surgery. This technology is a patented surface treatment that utilizes an electron-beam-induced grafting method to append a hydrophilic layer onto the surface of an IOL. To date, it has been increasingly important that every IOL needs an injector for implantation and every IOL injector needs a surface treatment to enable the IOL to travel safely and smoothly without any damages after entering into the patient’s eye during cataract surgery. Since its commercialization, LubriMATRIXTM has increasingly gained market share in the nearly 30 million cataract surgeries worldwide annually, with EB helping to enable this vital process.

The drive to smaller, faster and more versatile electronic devices such as cell phones has accelerated innovation in state-of-the-art computer chips. With the urgent need to reduce the overall size of the chips while at the same time maintain extremely tight tolerances on the thickness of the new generation chips, breakthroughs in process control are required. Recently UV based in-process endpoint technology has made multi film real time processing possible. The system requires a UV permeable polymeric film to achieve the required performance. Applied Materials has integrated a high energy stationary UV cure system to fabricate the UV transparent polymer films. Current films have the capability to exhibit extremely high transmittance in UVA and UVB. However, as the thickness of the chips continues to be reduced, there is a need to further extend the transmittance of the film to the UVC region to allow the use of novel materials chemistries and cure systems. The optical uniformity of the film and time to cure makes UV curing a critical technology for these processes. Beyond semiconductor chip manufacturing, this method of control has applicability in a wide range of industrial processing systems where precision is critical to the product success and in emerging technologies like Augmented and Mixed Reality.

OASIS International recently announced their QUASAR™ system - a UV-C LED system for point-of-dispense disinfection. Point-of-dispense offers UV treatment right at the spout, treating both the beverage water and the dispense point which is exposed to external contact from the end user. This type of treatment ensures the beverage water is getting the right amount of disinfection with no opportunity to become infected at another point and prevents outlet-sourced contamination, or bacteria growing up the pipeline from the point of use. The QUASAR system provides instantaneous disinfection with a pathogen inactivation rating of 99.99%. The system offers smart operation with 10-minute intervals to keep the dispense point disinfected. This feature provides both protection from retrograde contamination and surface disinfection for the dispenser. Point-of-dispense offers last mile disinfection of pathogens that might be growing at any point prior to the outlet.